FATHER, SON AND HOLY MOM

A Sermon by Bill McDonald from Acts 2:1-12

May 11, 2008

Acts 2:1-12

¹When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

⁵Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

You just had to know my mother. Right beside the miniature golf course, a racetrack had been built. Compact cars about the size of Mini-Coopers had been stripped of glass and fitted with protective screens across the windows. For a few dollars you could race against the clock in these tiny cars, speeding around a serpentine track with banks of old car tires serving as barrier walls. I was home from college and had brought Julie home to Memphis to get to know my folks. So my parents and their best friends and Julie and I went to play miniature golf. And then we discovered the racetrack. Mom and dad’s crazy best friend couldn’t be restrained as he paid his money, hopped in a car and immediately careened into a rubber wall, flipping the car over on its side. Gales of laughter greeted him afterward and he dared one of us to be the next neighborhood NASCAR driver. My dad wisely refused. I wasn’t about to embarrass myself in front of my girlfriend. But my mother grabbed a helmet and headed for the track. You have to understand my mother. She was a fashion plate. She was playing miniature golf in perfectly matched slacks and blouse, bracelets dangling from her wrists, her hair coiffed as if she had just gotten a makeover by a professional. But she crammed that helmet down over her bouffant, climbed in her car through the window because the doors were welded shut for safety, and proceeded to drive off in the opposite direction from which she was supposed to go! That image will forever stay with me: my petite mom, peering over the wheel of a half-pint hot rod, putting along so slowly that the clock couldn’t have timed her even if she had been headed in the right direction, teenage track officials in hot pursuit on foot behind her yelling “Turn around!.” When she got back to us, her hair looked as if she had slept on it for a week and then stuck her finger in a light socket. And she couldn’t stop laughing. From this I learned that you can’t enjoy life if you are constantly worrying about your image. From this I learned that love doesn’t depend upon how your hair looks. From this I learned that standing on the sidelines of life is nowhere near as much fun as diving into it. Mom was a teacher. Oh, not a professional teacher; she got her GED from high school a year after she married my dad. No, teaching was simply part of her nature, part of her make-up. That’s the way the Holy Spirit is in our lives. And we need that.

The image of God from the Garden of Eden story speaks to us of a Creator God who drops us into the garden of life and then visits occasionally to see how we are doing. That makes sense with how we might view a Creator—superior, aloof. A potter does not make a pot and then spend every day holding it, staring at it. But that Creator image doesn’t get me what I need from God. I need a closer God, don’t you? That’s why I am so fired up by Jesus. Jesus is a world-walker; he knows the ropes; he’s been there, done that. God with us! But, wait a minute, last week we celebrated Ascension Sunday. After his resurrection, Jesus went on to heaven. “God with us” went somewhere we can’t yet go. It was like going hunting with dad and having him clamber up the steep side of a dry creek bank saying, “Come on,” while my ten-year-old legs couldn’t begin to scale an eight-foot bank while I was toting a shotgun. We want to go; we want to keep up with Jesus, but he himself told his disciples, “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now.” (John 13:36) I need more than a historical Messiah who lived an inspirational life but went to heaven 2,000 years ago. That may strum my heartstrings but it is not going to meet my needs. I need more than a God who drops in occasionally. I need more than a God who lived once a long time ago. I need a living God who is here, right here. Always, forever.

I need a God who is a lot like our mother when we are small. I love the answers which elementary kids recently gave about their mothers.

How did God make mothers?

• God made my mom the same like God made me--just using bigger parts.
• Magic plus super powers…and a lot of stirring.

What ingredients are mothers made of?

• They had to get their start from men’s bones; then they mostly use string, I think.

What kind of little girl was your mom?

• My mom has always been mom and none of that other stuff.
• They say she used to be nice.

Who’s the boss at your house?

• Mom doesn’t want to be boss, but she has to because dad’s such a goofball.
• Mom is; you can tell by room inspection; she can see the stuff under the bed.

What’s the difference between moms and dads?

• Moms know how to talk to teachers without scaring them.
• Moms have magic; they make you feel better without medicine.

What would you do to make your mom perfect?

• On the inside she’s already perfect; outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.

Even people who didn’t have a nurturing mother know what they missed. We know how motherhood is supposed to be. Mothers teach us the right path, comfort us when we are distressed, reassure us when we fail, encourage us to reach for the stars. And that’s exactly what we as adults need God to do—to teach, comfort, reassure, encourage. So Jesus told his disciples in the gospel of John, “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (John 15:25-26)

The Holy Spirit is the one who brings Jesus’ teachings to our minds when we are about to head off in the wrong direction. When that difficult choice lays out before us, the Holy Spirit reminds us which path Jesus would have chosen. When we are so defeated that we just want to give up, the Holy Spirit reminds us of Jesus’ courage. Recalling for us the resurrection, the Holy Spirit is what makes us get back up and try again. If we don’t understand what Jesus meant or how to interpret it for our lives, the Holy Spirit is our interpreter, teaching us the meaning of the faith. The Creator was with us at the beginning; the Redeemer was with us on earth; the Sustainer is with us daily. Now that’s a God that covers all the bases! That’s what I need; that’s what we all need. The Father made us; the Son inspired us; the Holy Spirit nurtures us. The Holy Spirit is God in the present tense.

When the ministerial staff was planning this worship service several weeks ago, Colette remarked, “There is a mothering to the Holy Spirit: the constancy, the presence, the support.” You know what she means, don’t you. We have experienced it in human form with our mothers. Through the use of the Holy Spirit, God is an all-season, every person God. I like it that the Acts scripture reports that “Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.” Forget about the tongues of fire. What matters to me is that phrase, “rested on each of them.” Not just on the twelve disciples, not just on the elders, not just on the men, but on each one of them, women, men, adults, children…not one was left out. Cyd reminded us in that same staff meeting that, as one of the believers, Jesus’ mother Mary would have been in that room that Pentecost day. The Holy Spirit came and healed the wounds of a grieving mother, reminding her of what her son taught.

The Holy Spirit isn’t some weird, Casper-like, ghostly force. What it is is the very nature of a God who has never been able to set down his creation, who holds it all in loving hands. The Holy Spirit is the way we describe a God who loves creation fiercely, completely, constantly. The minister went to call on a grieving mother after the death of her young son. She was inconsolable, wailing and screaming. In front of her five other children she shrieked, “I can’t stand it! It’s too much to bear! I wish I had never had any children!” The minister gathered the other children off to a side and said, “Your mother doesn’t mean that. It’s just the grief inside her coming out.” But the oldest child said, “Oh, she means it, but it’s all right. She would say the same thing no matter which one of us had died.” Those children understood that their mother had a love for them so deep that it hurt. And that’s how much God loves us. You may find that hard to believe, that the Almighty God could care that much about you in particular. But you just have to understand our God. You just have to know our God.